Flight number record
DL 563
Delta Air Lines · New York to Kansas City
- Route
- LGA → MCI
- Departs
- 15:55
- Flights
- 307
- Period
- July 2025 to June 2026
Historical statistics for July 2025 to June 2026, not live status. For today’s DL 563, check with Delta Air Lines.
DL 563 draws a C−. About one flight in three arrives at least 15 minutes late, and the typical late arrival is an hour and a half behind schedule. Build slack into anything you connect to. That rests on 307 flights, with a median arrival 4 minutes early.
The national on-time rate over the same period is 77.6%, so DL 563 runs 12 points behind the country as a whole. Across a thousand flights that is about 116 extra late arrivals.
Key figures
On time
66.0%
Arrivals under 15 minutes late, of 288 completed flights
Avg delay
83 min
Across delayed arrivals only, not all flights
Cancelled
5.86%
National rate is 1.81%
1 hour+ late
15.3%
National rate is 8.1%
These figures cover 307 flights between July 2025 and June 2026. Beyond the headline rate, 15.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule. That is the number that wrecks a connection, and it is not visible in an on-time percentage alone.
Schedule
When DL 563 flies
DL 563 flies LGA to MCI without a single fixed slot. Its most common scheduled departure was 15:55, used on 48 of 307 flights, with 20:05 (45 flights) and 18:29 (35 flights) next. Carriers retime flights through the season, so the rates here blend slightly different positions in the aircraft's day.
- Departs 15:5548 flights15.6%
- Departs 20:0545 flights14.7%
- Departs 18:2935 flights11.4%
Scale runs 0% to 100%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
Share of scheduled departures at each local time. Times used on fewer than one flight in ten are not listed.
A 15:55 departure sits in the 2pm–5pm window. Across every US flight scheduled in that window the on-time rate is 72.4%, and DL 563 runs 6 points worse at 66.0%. Midday slots inherit some of the morning's delays without yet carrying the full weight of the evening's.
Against the route
DL 563 next to LGA to MCI
Every carrier on LGA to MCI combined arrived on time 68.7% of the time across 1,796 flights, so DL 563 is 3 points behind it. Delta flew 975 flights on the same city pair under all its flight numbers, including this one, and those ran 70.1% on time. Across its whole network Delta Air Lines managed 81.6%, which this flight trails by 16 points.
| Compared with | Flights | On time | Avg delay | Cancelled | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DL 563thin sample | 307 | 66.0% | 83 min | 5.86% | C− |
| All Delta Air Lines on LGA–MCI | 975 | 70.1% | 85 min | 5.03% | C− |
| All carriers on LGA–MCI | 1,796 | 68.7% | 76 min | 4.57% | C− |
| Delta Air Lines, whole network | 1,038,570 | 81.6% | 71 min | 1.62% | B |
Across the year
DL 563 quarter by quarter
Quarter by quarter DL 563 held fairly steady: 67.1% in Jul–Sep 2025, 63.5% in Oct–Dec 2025, 64.0% in Jan–Mar 2026 and 68.9% in Apr–Jun 2026. A spread of 5 points is about what a sample of this size moves on its own, so the annual figure is a fair summary.
- Jul–Sep 202579 flights67.1%
- Oct–Dec 202567 flights63.5%
- Jan–Mar 202683 flights64.0%
- Apr–Jun 202678 flights68.9%
Scale runs 55% to 75%. Rows with fewer than 30 flights show a dash.
By weekday, DL 563 ranged from 61.4% on Sunday to 71.1% on Monday. With about 44 flights behind each day, a spread of 10 points is inside normal variation, so the day you fly is not worth changing for this flight.
Delay causes
Why DL 563 runs late
One category carries most of the weight here. Carrier accounts for 51% of the 8,164 delay minutes carriers reported, and the remaining four split what is left. The split is by minutes rather than by flights, so a few very long delays count for as much as many short ones.
- 51%Carrier
- 25%National Airspace System
- 21%Late-arriving aircraft
- 2%Extreme weather
The largest share of delay minutes, 51%, falls under carrier control: crew scheduling, maintenance, fuelling, baggage. Unlike weather, that is a management outcome, and it is the category where the gap between two carriers on the same schedule is genuinely earned. It accounts for 4,201 of the 8,164 delay minutes reported here. The split is drawn from 8,164 delay minutes reported on DL 563.
Cancellations run at 5.86%, against 1.81% nationally. That is roughly one flight in fifteen cancelled outright. A cancelled flight is invisible in every on-time figure on this page, so the punctuality numbers above describe only the flights that actually operated.
Connections and routes
What a delay on this flight costs
For anyone connecting, the number to weigh is not the on-time rate but the tail behind it. 15.3% of arrivals land a full hour or more behind schedule, against 8.1% nationally. A 45-minute layover does not survive that, and no amount of walking quickly changes it. Ninety minutes is the honest minimum here, and two hours if the onward flight is on a separate ticket.
The 1,107 miles between these two airports put this in the middle of the US network, around two and a half to three hours of block time. That is enough cruise to absorb a ten-minute late pushback and not enough to absorb thirty. It is also long enough that the aircraft usually flies three or four legs a day rather than six, which slows how fast delay compounds.
The same number turns up on six other city pairs in the data, including MCI to LGA (51), DCA to ATL (16) and ATL to DCA (16), but none flew often enough under DL 563 to report a rate for. Carriers move flight numbers between routes, so the figures on this page apply to LGA to MCI only.
One caution: this is a thin sample. 307 flights over twelve months is enough to clear this site's floor but not enough to pin the rate down tightly, and a single bad week moves it by more than a point. Treat the grade as a rough reading.
What to do with this
Booking DL 563
For a booking, the cancellation rate is the figure to plan around on DL 563: 5.86% of its 307 scheduled flights did not operate. A late arrival costs an hour and a half, but a cancellation costs the day, so leave a later option open.
Related
Where to go next
- LGA to MCI, every carrier and departure
- MCI to LGA, the return direction
- Delta Air Lines 572 on the same route81.2%
- Delta Air Lines 2068 on the same route59.1%
- LaGuardia (LGA) delay statistics
- Kansas City International (MCI) delay statistics
- Delta Air Lines on-time record
- Every Delta Air Lines flight number with a record
- The most and least reliable flight numbers in the US
- What a cancellation rate actually tells you (and what it hides)
A flight number here means Delta Air Lines’s own number as it reports to the DOT. How the figures are computed is on the methodology page.
Source: US DOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics, on-time performance data, July 2025 to June 2026. Last updated 15 September 2026; recomputed monthly. How this data is collected.